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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28891167">Firebird</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiorenza_a/pseuds/Fiorenza_a'>Fiorenza_a</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lewis (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:07:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,734</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28891167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiorenza_a/pseuds/Fiorenza_a</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>So all were lost, which in the ship were found,<br/>They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd.</p><p>From 'A Burnt Ship' by <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:John_Donne">John Donne</a></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Firebird</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Spoilers for: Lewis: Life Born of Fire + Morse: Dead on Time &amp; Masonic Mysteries</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"He’ll never see it."</p><p>Lewis remembered saying that, something like that, thinking he understood it.</p><p>He wasn’t sure why he should remember it now - maybe because things had been so certain then, the sands which had shifted so confusingly beneath his feet, still solid terra firma. He had been right, of course. Morse would never see it, could never see it. Morse had lost in love - <em>more</em> - had believed the better man had won. Had gone on believing it.</p><p>Lewis had wondered at that - what it must be like - to be so sure that you were not the better man - without rancour - because you loved someone so selflessly that it truly <em>was</em> only their happiness that mattered. Only Morse’s stoic romanticism could have made that bearable. Never the adolescent star-crossed petulance of Romeo and Julietfor Morse, always Eloise and Abelard.</p><p>Lewis had loved Val of course, but it wasn’t a sublime love. Val would have laughed at the very idea. They had something else. Something more earthbound, solid and fundamental. Val had never chided him about the hours he kept, not in the way that some wives did. Val wasn’t threatened by the job, or incapable of coping on her own - but she made sure he remembered that it <em>was</em> a job. That his family was at home, not down the nick. That the only place he was indispensable was by her side.</p><p>He had been grateful for that in the end; grateful beyond any hope of comprehending at the time. All the pub-nights he’d cried off to go home, all the leave he’d insisted upon taking. All the times he had ‘phoned, simply to see how she was, just because he was at a desk, and had five minutes to himself, and could.</p><p>Morse could be unforgiving about that; unforgiving and a little in awe. As if his sergeant kept a unicorn and thought it no more noteworthy than owning a toothbrush. As if the age of miracles had not passed. In the middle of an unremarkable Thames Valley cop shop, the manifest wonder of a happy marriage.</p><p>And it had been happy; happy and quite ordinary - and so very rare and precious. Full of packed lunches and family holidays; and innocuous anniversaries spent in front of the box, with the kids packed off to the in-laws. Bath times and bed times; rows about homework and stomping teenagers; and plans for a retirement spent together.</p><p>No, Morse had no hope of seeing it. Women were never women for Morse. They were always damsels waiting for their shining knight. It didn’t matter how many selfish, deluded, treacherous and murderous women he arrested, they were always aberrations - never part of the continuum. Nothing in Wagner ever seemed to prepare Morse for the base humanity that inhabited woman.</p><p>So nothing had prepared Morse for the way Susan Fallon had finally left him. Not in the gilded years of his youth, not later in the ale-soaked days of rekindled memory. Lewis had thought he understood; had as much as said so. The arrogance of his own youth, not quite spent.</p><p>But then Morse had gone; and Val had gone; and his youth had slipped away. No, he hadn’t understood then. Not then, when Val had sent him into the world with a freshly pressed shirt and a goodbye peck on the cheek; a placeholder for things no self-respecting Geordie made a fuss about on his own doorstep - no matter how far south he moved.</p><p> </p><p>~~</p><p> </p><p>The sun sank lower in the sky, filling the shaded room with golden shadows. On the sofa, laid out beneath a tangle of blanket, Hathaway stirred fitfully, mumbling something incoherent.</p><p>The hospital had discharged Hathaway once they were satisfied the smoke and drugs were out of his system. Not that it had taken Hathaway long to replace the smoke. Despite his ascetic appearance, Hathaway was a profligate, if joyless, smoker. Lewis couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Hathaway smoke anything down to the butt. As vices went, it seemed more penance than indulgence.</p><p>"Why couldn’t you tell me?" Lewis breathed in frustration, cautious of disturbing the sleeper, all anger spent, yet hungry for an answer.</p><p>Hathaway still smelled of smoke. The hospital had tidied him up, but somehow it still lingered in his over-shorn hair. The aroma of something pungently apple-scented mingled discordantly with the smokey top notes - the exuberantly scented product, Lewis supposed, chosen more for its ability to mask, than for its accordance with his sergeant’s spartan tastes.</p><p>Once, a long time ago, in passingly similar fashion, someone had set out to torment Morse. Morse’s home had been set aflame, but beleaguered and bewildered as Morse had been, he hadn’t lain there with his murderer in his arms and that look of serenity on his face. It hadn’t been Hathaway’s final, stumbling attempt to re-enter the conflagration that had shaken Lewis, it had been the look on Hathaway’s face when Lewis had burst into the smoke-wreathed bedroom and found Hathaway a picture of contented repose.</p><p>The hospital had blamed the drugs, and Hathaway had done nothing to discourage that notion, but Lewis knew what he had seen. Hathaway had been ready to meet his fate long before the manner of his demise had been all but sealed.</p><p>"Bloody fool," Lewis chided the sleeping man, "all this over a kiss?"</p><p>But it had been more than a kiss, as Gethsemane had been more than a kiss. Hathaway blamed himself for the daisy-chain of misery and death. Lewis wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that the sum of his sins, no matter the age committed, amounted to few amongst many.</p><p>Hathaway stirred again, this time flailing around in the twisted blanket until it fell from his body and he sat up, stockinged feet planted on the floor, blinking stupidly in the golden light.</p><p>"Tea?" enquired Lewis, because, unlike religion, what it couldn’t fix, it didn’t hurt.</p><p>Hathaway slowly shook his head, as if it pained him to move it, and reached for the third-full whisky bottle on the coffee table in front of him. Then he picked up the empty tumbler which had been standing next to the bottle, blew into it as a nod towards hygiene, and poured himself a generous measure. He waved the depleted bottle at Lewis by way of invitation, but Lewis shook his head.</p><p>"I’ll put the kettle on," Lewis suggested instead, stirring himself to head for the kitchen.</p><p>"Suit yourself," replied Hathaway, with no hint of enthusiasm.</p><p>In the time it took Lewis to return with two steaming mugs of tea, Hathaway had come close to finishing the remains of the bottle and was staring in contemplation at the empty tumbler still cradled in his hands. "I can’t remember if I like whisky," he announced.</p><p>"From here, I’d say it was academic," said Lewis, nodding towards the nigh empty whisky bottle as he put Hathaway’s tea down in front of him.</p><p>"You saved me," Hathaway intoned, without emotion, into his empty whisky glass. Then he looked up, squinting against a stray shaft of light which had escaped the ill-drawn curtains, and added, "Why?"</p><p>"Because you’d have gone up in smoke, otherwise," answered Lewis.</p><p>"And you didn’t think I deserved that?" said Hathaway.</p><p>"Ordeal by fire?" replied Lewis, "Saint James of the Screaming Spires? Sounds plain daft to me. ‘Sides, I need a sergeant, and me Mam taught us not to be proud. Nowt wrong with fire damaged stock."</p><p>"Thought you didn’t hold with professional Geordies," observed Hathaway acerbically, but there was the ghost of a smile on his lips.</p><p>"Howay and drink yer tea, man," chided Lewis with what he hoped was a comradely wink.</p><p>"Still want to know if I’m gay?" asked Hathaway unexpectedly.</p><p>"Alive is good enough for now," replied Lewis.</p><p>"I kissed Zoë," said Hathaway.</p><p>"Did you know?" Lewis couldn’t help himself asking.</p><p>Hathaway shook his head, less carefully this time, the whisky, or the grace of the untouched tea, clearly having healing properties, "Not then…later…I don’t think it made any difference." Hathaway paused, turning inwardly for a few moments, then he raised his eyes to Lewis once again and said, "I killed a man because I thought it did."</p><p>"He killed himself," corrected Lewis, knowing that it wasn’t enough, or maybe even true, but that life was lost beyond saving and this one was still within grasp, and increasingly precious.</p><p>"Suicide as a weapon," accused Hathaway.</p><p>"Love is never wrong," argued Lewis uncomfortably.</p><p>Something stirred in Hathaway’s eyes, like a leviathan from the deep, breaking the surface for an instant, then sinking silently back into the depths from whence it came.</p><p>Lewis finished his tea.</p><p>Hathaway swang his legs back up onto the sofa, sinking his head into the cushions piled against the armrest, and fishing about haphazardly for his fallen blanket.</p><p>Lewis moved to retrieve the blanket, shaking out the crumpled folds and draping it tenderly over the younger man, the way he had a thousand times with the discarded bedcovers of his now-grown offspring. Little moments of domesticity still able to claw spitefully at his heart.</p><p>Hathaway reached out a long arm and found his thigh, "Thank you, sir."</p><p>Lewis lifted the finely boned hand in his own, guiding it back to rest on Hathaway’s chest. "Will you be alright?" he asked, his skin warm against Hathaway’s phlegmatic touch, his eyes searching the sergeant’s unfathomable gaze.</p><p>Hathaway nodded, "Just fine, sir, promise."</p><p>Lewis nodded in return, and then he gathered up the tea mugs and headed for the kitchen.</p><p>Behind him Hathaway turned his head on his makeshift pillows, piled high enough to foreshorten his height and allow his legs to find room on the sofa, his gaze following Lewis out of the room.</p><p>Lewis returned to meet the unwavering scrutiny a few moments later, offering inadequately, "Best be off, then."</p><p>Hathaway’s acknowledgement was more implied than visible, the barest twitch of muscles.</p><p>"Right," said Lewis, bereft of words more fitted to a sickbed farewell. At least, to this particular sickbed, and this particular man, still sick of soul, if no longer of body.</p><p>Feeling inexplicably helpless, Lewis resigned himself to abandoning his singed and heartsick charge to the lengthening shadows of the fading evening. He was still reluctantly fumbling to unlatch the front door when Hathaway’s stoic entreaty reached him, changing everything.</p><p>"Stay."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="western">END</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firebird">Firebird</a>
  <br/>
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet">Romeo and Juliet</a>
  <br/>
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9lo%C3%AFse">Eloise and Abelard</a>
  <br/>
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot">Gethsemane</a>
  <br/>
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal#By_fire">Ordeal by fire</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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